Goenawan Goes: Tempo Founder Quits PAN Over Prabowo
Jakarta. Goenawan Mohamad, the founder of Tempo Magazine and architect of the National Mandate Party (PAN), has resigned from the party he cofounded in protest of its support for Prabowo Subianto's presidential campaign.
Goenawan announced his resignation in a message on his Facebook page.
"Since the fall of Suharto, we wanted to build a party that had a clear political platform from which to fight," he said. "Towards a wider democracy, a more lively plurality, and wider welfare. PAN once tried to go in that direction, but, as time has passed, it has stopped seeing politics as a fight."
PAN party chairman Hatta Rajasa resigned as Coordinating Minster of Economic Affairs this week to run as Prabowo Subianto's vice president — a decision that Goenawan believes made it impossible for him to continue as a member of the party because of Prabowo's questionable human-rights record.
"PAN has become opportunist," he said. "What PAN aspires to is only to make the chairman vice president. For that, PAN is willing to support the power that once wanted to shut down the pro-democracy movement in the New Order era….. I have no hope left. I hereby resign from the party's membership."
The party reacted angrily to the tone of Goenawan's resignation announcement.
PAN deputy chairman Drajad H. Wibowo said Goenewan had contributed little to the party in recent years — even failing to pay his membership dues.
"I've never seen him come to PAN's headquarters to offer suggestions or anything that a member usually does," he said, adding that Goenawan had not campaigned for the party during the legislative elections in April.
In a remark short on both grace and logic, Drajad then went on to say that Goenawan's opposition to Prabowo on human rights grounds was hypocritical because the Tempo founder was friends with a university lecturer accused of sexual assault.
"Prove it, if [Goenawan] is against violence, how about the sexual abuse committed by his own friend?" he said, referring to lecturer and poet, Sitok Srengenge.
"I've never regarded him as a par of PAN family anyway, at least since I became the deputy chairman," he said.
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